Yesterday I did a fairly rare thing and I went to a guitar shop and I played some basses!
I've not done this for a while, so I wanted to see what was out there, and what I could knock off my bucket list. I played one of these:
...but I can't abide a bass with pickups shinier than my head. In all honesty I thought the pickups in this thing killed, but after playing my Wishbone Ash, John Entwistle and Wishbone Ash riffs I was done. I was also worried I was going to take out another bass with that headstock. Still, after playing many dully-voiced Thunderbirds this thing is a really nice change.
I tried an Epiphone EB-3 and a Rickenbacker 4003S. The Rick made me realise that my work to modify my 4003 wasn't a complete waste of time. The EB-3 did all the Jack Bruce stuff nicely.
But there was one bass I kept coming back to...
I'm not a Stingray guy, and I don't know my MusicMans (MusicMen?) very well, but from what I gather the Sub range is below the Sterling range, which is below actual MusicMen. This is therefore the Squier Affinity of Musicmen? Who knows!
I can honestly say that this bass makes me thing that this is the best time for a beginner bassist to be starting out. The fretwork is really good on this bass. The frets are level and well crowned, and the action is low. The nut slots are also cut very accurately to the right height. The finish is terrific as well; no ripples or flaws anywhere in the cream lacquer. The preamp cuts and boosts as it should.
This bass is the opposite of my Chinese Dan Armstrong adventure: NBD - Chinese "Dan Armstrong Ampeg" counterfeit.
I'm blown away by the quality of this bass. The only flaw I can find anywhere is a small crack in the lacquer under the control plate where one screw hole is located. The crack is a couple of milometers long. Big deal.
When I started playing bass the nearest thing to a cheap Stingray was the OLP MM2. I owned one for a while, and it was a strictly passive bass with a log of a neck, terrific weight, and a pickguard that should have been symmetrical but which wasn't. Things have progressed even in the ten or so years I've been playing bass.
So, the Sub came home. Granted, I've done one thing to this bass today:
It now has the Kent Armstrong pickup from my "Dan Armstrong" installed in it. I wired the pickup with the coils in parallel and it sounds like a Stingray. The stock Sub pickup is powered by two big ceramic slugs and is hard-wired in series, with a DC resistance of around 12 k ohms. The stock pickup had a little too much output, and was driving the front end of my amps. This bass now does the perfect Stingray tone to my ears. My frame of reference for this tone is Tony Levin and At The Drive-In.
I might stick a black pickguard on it, but this bass is ready to be gigged tomorrow.
I've not done this for a while, so I wanted to see what was out there, and what I could knock off my bucket list. I played one of these:
...but I can't abide a bass with pickups shinier than my head. In all honesty I thought the pickups in this thing killed, but after playing my Wishbone Ash, John Entwistle and Wishbone Ash riffs I was done. I was also worried I was going to take out another bass with that headstock. Still, after playing many dully-voiced Thunderbirds this thing is a really nice change.
I tried an Epiphone EB-3 and a Rickenbacker 4003S. The Rick made me realise that my work to modify my 4003 wasn't a complete waste of time. The EB-3 did all the Jack Bruce stuff nicely.
But there was one bass I kept coming back to...
I'm not a Stingray guy, and I don't know my MusicMans (MusicMen?) very well, but from what I gather the Sub range is below the Sterling range, which is below actual MusicMen. This is therefore the Squier Affinity of Musicmen? Who knows!
I can honestly say that this bass makes me thing that this is the best time for a beginner bassist to be starting out. The fretwork is really good on this bass. The frets are level and well crowned, and the action is low. The nut slots are also cut very accurately to the right height. The finish is terrific as well; no ripples or flaws anywhere in the cream lacquer. The preamp cuts and boosts as it should.
This bass is the opposite of my Chinese Dan Armstrong adventure: NBD - Chinese "Dan Armstrong Ampeg" counterfeit.
I'm blown away by the quality of this bass. The only flaw I can find anywhere is a small crack in the lacquer under the control plate where one screw hole is located. The crack is a couple of milometers long. Big deal.
When I started playing bass the nearest thing to a cheap Stingray was the OLP MM2. I owned one for a while, and it was a strictly passive bass with a log of a neck, terrific weight, and a pickguard that should have been symmetrical but which wasn't. Things have progressed even in the ten or so years I've been playing bass.
So, the Sub came home. Granted, I've done one thing to this bass today:
It now has the Kent Armstrong pickup from my "Dan Armstrong" installed in it. I wired the pickup with the coils in parallel and it sounds like a Stingray. The stock Sub pickup is powered by two big ceramic slugs and is hard-wired in series, with a DC resistance of around 12 k ohms. The stock pickup had a little too much output, and was driving the front end of my amps. This bass now does the perfect Stingray tone to my ears. My frame of reference for this tone is Tony Levin and At The Drive-In.
I might stick a black pickguard on it, but this bass is ready to be gigged tomorrow.
